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Thursday, 28 February 2008

I just couldn't resist this vintage apron on Etsy at vintagegoodies there is something about the design and colours that I love. It seems to be modelled on a quilt pattern. I'm sure this classic star design has a specific name.

Another Etsy purchase was this beautiful cushion cover from Olive. She has some great fabric prints in her shop.

Tuesday, 26 February 2008

This David Austin rose is one of my favourites. It ranges from pink to yellow and has beautiful flowers packed with petals. These two blooms are next to each other and show his range of colour. And he is perfumed too :-) I think that these autumn roses are often the best, fuller and longer lasting than both the spring and summer blooms.

Another favourite is the grandly name Baronne Henriette de Snoy (below), a heritage rose at the other end of the garden who flowers her head off with minimal sun, sending beautiful long red new stems out every few weeks for another flush of flowers.

I just love roses despite their problems. My dream would be to have a special picking garden so that I could have flowers in the house all the time. Preferable a beautiful old walled garden...

Lastly, here is the gaudy pink Peter Frankenfeld who doesn't coordinate with anything else in my garden, his flowers are always perfect though, beautifully formed and long lasting on long strong stems so I always forgive him.

Saturday, 23 February 2008

Since I discovered kris's color stripes blog the other day I've been intrigued by the idea of pulling colours out of a aesthetically pleasing image as a way to develop strong colour palettes. Then the other day I found that Big Huge Labs had an automatic palette generator which does it in a moment. You can see the results above for this along with the limitations. The swatch to the immediate right of the photo is one that I have added manually, in the case of the fabric design I can't see how it missed the blue which makes the whole scheme. Other palettes I've made have missed even more basic colours. I love all the names and subtleties though of the whites and creams and greys.You can do the same with Photoshop but it takes longer. Better to start with the generator and then just tweak it later.

Friday, 22 February 2008

I got around to photographing some of my fifties skirts, tops and dresses for the vintage fabric group on Flickr. There is something about the old designs from this era that I love. And of course this combines flowers and fabric, two of my favourite things. This pattern comes from an old pleated skirt that is a bit too small for me. I've always meant to get it adjusted but I just like having these things around anyway.

I noticed while I was taking photos that a lot of these prints have a sort of painterly background to them rather than flat colour. I wonder how this was achieved.

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

Our front door window light is patterned with flannel flowers and looks amazing with the light through it, like an underwater scene in molten silver. An original federation feature in our house, it's nearly 100 years old.

And the echeverias are flowering. A few years ago I fell in love with succulents (I'm a sucker for garden infatuations) and bought about ten from a great guy on Ebay. This is one of my favourites - Echeveria 'Blue Curls' named for the beautiful ruffled blue leaves.

Tuesday, 19 February 2008

Such a beautiful treasury, I was actually admiring it and about to click on the purse at the top when I noticed my print! I am definitely going to have my ears pierced again so that I can wear some of the beautiful earrings on Etsy, like these beautiful glass flowers by Cassie from shopclementine.

Sunday, 17 February 2008

A busy weekend, spring or rather late summer, cleaning.Had time to quickly adapt a peony cutout I made last month into a fabric repeat using the colours I've been into recently, a sort of deep red with what I call turquoise.These are echoed in my recent favourites, below.I have experimented here with different combinations. Not sure which I like the best but perhaps the blue flowers on red. The colours haven't reproduced here exactly as I want, the blue is a bit more yellow and the red not quite right.I've signed up for a fabric printing course in May so I'm trying to do some experimenting so I can get the most out of the course. I think it will be great!

Friday, 15 February 2008

These are my current Flickr favourites made into a mosaic with fd Flickr Toys at Big Huge Labs. They have some fantastic widget things to do amazing things with your photos. But you probably already knew that!

Monday, 11 February 2008

These are the first flowers for this new arrival. So amazingly crafted and I love the way the yellow stamens come out gradually up the flower covering the brown button head. Also known as Helen's Flower or Sneezeweed!

Saturday, 9 February 2008

Wow, I hadn't even heard of Find of the Day till someone contacted me about this. Thanks Helen from creatinginthedark for helping me enjoy my 15 minutes of fame. (p.s. I have altered the email a bit, it was much longer so I couldn't fit the whole thing.)Lovely to be among all the tea drinkers too.

Wednesday, 6 February 2008

I've been thinking about this idea for a print for quite a while and finally got a design I really liked. So Friday night after great success with my LOVE print I decided to keep going and print this.Of course that meant one failed bulb and two ruined screens later I was almost ready to give up when the third screen came out well. Still, another trouble, some paper stuck to the screen down the bottom. I cleaned this up with gocco cleaner and a paper towel and eventually things started working.I think what I learnt from this is not to screen back large areas. They work best as 100% colour. This one I printed at 60lpi and 300dpi. I'm not sure if this lower resolution helps as I haven't tried higher.